All She Needed
by DramaLexy
Summary: Everything she never thought she wanted was exactly what she needed. Sequel to my story 'All She Wanted.' COMPLETE
1. Chapter 1

TITLE: All She Needed

AUTHOR: DramaLexy

SUMMARY: Sequel to my story **All She Wanted.** Everything she never thought she wanted was exactly what she needed.

DISCLAIMER: Oh, if they were mine...but they're not.

DISTRIBUTION: Sure, if you want it, just let me know where so I can visit.

* * *

Everything was quiet out on CAP. Too quiet. Boring patrols could lead to all sorts of trouble. Lee sighed to himself as he saw a bit of movement out of the corner of his eye. "Apollo to Starbuck: knock it off." 

Kara grinned, seated in her own Viper which was flying alongside her best friend's. "Aw, come on, Sir," she replied, 'waving' her wings again. "What else have I got out here to amuse myself with?"

"This isn't recess."

"I didn't hear the bell ring yet, did either of you girls?" Helo asked Starbuck and his pilot, Racetrack, from his spot in the Raptor that was also out on patrol.

"Nope," Racetrack replied. "Still recess." She made the Raptor give a little 'wave' as well.

"Remind me to never allow another shift with both you and I on CAP at the same time," Lee told Kara.

She laughed. "Come on, Apollo. You know you want to."

"Forget it."

"Aw, just a little one?"

"No."

"We won't tell anyone, Sir," Racetrack promised, her voice full of barely-contained laughter.

"I'll give you a stogie," Kara added.

"Are you serious?" Lee asked, surprised. "You're actually going to part with one of your cigars over this stupid of a stunt?"

Kara thought about it. "Better throw in an end-over-end flip-and-roll, too."

There was a moment of hesitation before Lee actually executed both maneuvers. The other three cheered. "I want payment upon landing, Starbuck," Lee told his best friend. She just laughed.

"I ran out a week ago."

* * *

The pair was still talking about the deal as they walked the halls of the Galactica that evening after their shift. "That was low, Kara," Lee admonished. She laughed. 

"Get over it. It's not like I got anything serious out of you in exchange."

"You still owe me something."

"Like what?"

"I dunno…I'll think of something."

"Yeah right. You think I'm stupid enough to go for carte blanche?"

"You're the one who lied in the first place."

"I didn't lie, per se. I'm sure I'll get more stogies eventually."

"Uh-huh." They stopped at an intersection as Lee realized they were going in opposite directions. "Where are you off to?" he asked.

"A kidnapping," she replied. He raised an eyebrow.

"Oh, really?"

"Mmm-hmm."

"Anyone I know?"

"Your father. I think it's been a few days since he had a meal that didn't consist of either just coffee or something that had gone cold a few hours before. So I'm gonna take him to dinner before he forgets where the mess hall is." Lee smiled.

"He's not a fan of the mess."

"Yeah, well, neither am I, but it's either eat the food or starve." Lee shook his head.

"No, I mean he doesn't like actually eating there. Something he told me when I was younger: the officer's mess should be a place where everyone gets an escape from their day, not has their CO hovering around."

Kara raised an eyebrow. "Wait, we actually get to escape from our day at some point? Why didn't anyone tell me this? And that little philosophy has never stopped Tigh."

"Uh-huh. Remember who you're talking about."

Kara feigned shock. "Was that Lee Adama being insubordinate?"

"Of course not. You must have been hearing things." They both smiled. "How about we go grab a couple plates and take them to his office?"

"Fine."

* * *

Adama looked up from the papers spread around his desk at the sound of a knock on his door. "Come in," he called, and sat back with a smile as he watched his laughing son and almost-daughter come in the door, trying to balance three plates and cups. "What's all this?" 

"The forgotten pastime of dinner," Kara told him. Adama chuckled.

"I think I remember partaking in that at one point in my life."

"We thought we'd bring you something to eat," Lee told him. Kara coughed pointedly. "Oh, all right. It was her idea originally."

"I appreciate it," Adama said, getting up and joining them at the small, low table in the middle of the room. "I heard you two were out on the same patrol this morning."

Lee nodded. "Kara's a rotten cheater."

She sat up, indignant. "I am not! You'll get your frakkin' cigar eventually!"

Lee pretended not to hear. "She tricked me with a false promise," he continued telling his father.

"Oh, my Gods, you are such a crybaby!"

Adama smiled at their antics. "Tricked you into what, exactly?" he asked his son, who suddenly busied himself with eating. Kara burst out laughing.

* * *

In all honesty, Lee and Kara hadn't been this close of friends since their Academy days, pre-Zak. There was a synchronization between them that no one else could really get, but they were both enjoying it. 

"Aw, frak," Kara muttered to herself. She and Lee were both laying underneath her Viper doing maintenance, and she'd just discovered the source of the problems she'd had on her last patrol. Half of the fighter's systems were little more than temporary wirings and parts held in place by duct tape. "Hey, Lee?" she started. He handed her a wrench before she could ask. "Thanks."

"No problem. How bad?"

"It really needs total replacement. Half the port maneuvering control system is a mass of really crappy quick fixes."

"Don't let the Chief hear you say that," Lee teased. Kara laughed. "And unless you're going to magically make a new MCS appear..."

"I could steal yours."

Lee snorted. "Yeah, right."

Kara sighed. "Damnit, I can't get this casing off." Lee abandoned what he'd been working on with the fuel system and moved over to help.

"Don't break the frakking thing," he admonished, reaching over her to attempt to get the protective panel off. It unexpectedly came loose, and Kara rolled to her side to avoid getting hit in the face with it. The move accomplished two things at once - getting her out of harm's way and getting right up in Lee's face. He instantly met her glare with a look of innocence. "I'm sorry! I didn't think it was going to come loose that easily. You said it was stuck. You going soft or something?" he couldn't help needling her. Kara made an attempt to smack him, but there was minimal space between them and Lee easily grabbed her arms.

Neither of them was exactly sure what happened next, but suddenly they went from her trying to hit him to his lips on hers. And neither of them was pulling back.

The sound of a toolbox hitting the floor just a few feet away got their attention, and they both turned to see a pair of legs standing beside the Viper – Tyrol. He didn't say anything, just walked away, but they knew he saw. Lee slid away, getting up from under the fighter. "Y-you should get back to work," he told Kara before leaving.

* * *

It was unfortunate that Tyrol wasn't the only one who had seen them. Gossip spread like wildfire on a ship like Galactica, and by the next morning, the rumors had made their way as far as the XO, who was not amused. 

"This had better be someone's imagination in overdrive," he told Lee when he pulled him into his office. The CAG's silence made the answer obvious. "What the frak were you thinking?"

"I wasn't, Sir." Probably both the dumbest and smartest response he could come up with.

"As if we didn't have enough problems around here already," Tigh continued to rant. "What's your position on this ship?"

Lee squared himself. "Commander of the Air Group."

"Yeah. Be clear that that's on your father's order, not mine. What is Lieutenant Thrace's position?" Lee knew coming in the door exactly where this conversation was going to go.

"First Wing." His direct subordinate.

"When she's not in a cell in the brig. So let me give you a piece of advice, Captain: unless one or both of those two facts change anytime in the near future, I don't even want to hear a single whisper about the two of you doing anything other than keeping our squad in the air. Is that clear?"

"Crystal."

Tigh nodded, satisfied. "Dismissed."

* * *

Lee knew that he and Kara had to talk – somehow the clock had to get rolled back on things between them, he just wasn't sure how. When they wound up at the shooting gallery together the following afternoon, he realized that talking while holding deadly weapons might not be the best idea, but putting it off probably wasn't good, either. 

"What happened the other day can't happen again," Lee finally got up the nerve to say while he reloaded. Kara emptied her clip into her target without even looking over at him. "Did you hear me?" She shot him a glare as she, too, began to reload.

"Yeah, Lee. What do you want me to say?"

"I don't know. Some sign of acknowledgement."

"Fine. I heard you."

"Everything's got to…just go back to the way they were." He fired his first round.

Kara rolled her eyes. "Right…that'll work out great."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing. We'll pretend it never happened. But you don't get to have your shorts in a twist when I live my life without you. This is your choice, Lee."

"No, it's not my choice. Believe me, I wouldn't be choosing this if I had an option. But I don't."

"Why? Because the big bad XO said so? Frak him."

"You think my father's opinion is any different?"

"Did you ask him?"

"It can't happen, Kara. We've got responsibilities that unfortunately overrule our personal lives." She put her entire clip straight into her target's head, then took off her glasses and holstered her gun.

"Keep telling yourself that Lee. Maybe one day you'll actually believe it," she told him before leaving.

* * *

It would have been a lot easier for Kara to go to sleep that night if Lee hadn't been right there across the room from her. He'd even forgotten to close his curtain in his exhaustion, so she had a perfect view of him dead asleep in his rack. Why did he have to be such a stickler for protocol? His brother sure hadn't been. She sighed as that thought came to her – definitely dangerous territory. 

Kara closed her own curtain, shut her eyes, and made an attempt at counting backwards from one thousand to see if she could fall asleep before zero. Somewhere around eight hundred, she was out, but was nowhere near being able to get a good night's sleep. She had no idea where she was in her dream world, at least not at first. Everything was dark, but she could hear a sound…someone yelling, and someone crying.

As she looked around, her eyes fell upon the source, a blonde girl huddled in a corner as a woman stood over her, almost nonsensically ranting at her. "You belong here…and this is how you repay our efforts…believe me, you'll never have love…"

The moment was so familiar, but Kara suddenly realized that the child trying to make herself part of the wall wasn't her. It was a face she knew, though, even if it was slightly aged from when she'd last seen it.

"Lachel…" the word escaped her mouth before she even realized. If the platinum blonde Cylon before her heard, she didn't care. Her ranting only paused to allow her to make a few closed-fisted blows to the little body in front of her. Kara tried to move forward to stop her, but her feet were suddenly planted to the floor. She tried to call out, but her voice wasn't working. There was nothing she could do but watch a piece of her childhood reenacted.

Kara woke up with a start, relieved to find herself in her rack, not…wherever she'd been dreaming of. According to her watch, it was early, but almost time to get up if she was going to go running. She didn't particularly want to go back to sleep anyway. _She's gone, _she told herself as she got up and started getting ready. _They can't hurt her because she's gone._

* * *

TBC...(see the pretty blue button? I live for feedback)  



	2. Chapter 2

Thanks for all the reviews I've gotten so far!

* * *

After a few more nights of dreams, sleeping was becoming a challenge. Sometimes Lachel was being tormented for her betrayal of her Cylon purpose; sometimes she was being trained alongside her sister to command centurions (and the irony of the biocylons also treating centurions like slaves was not lost). Kara had no idea what was going on anymore, which led her to pay a visit to Galactica's resident Cylon.

"What's wrong?" Sharon asked upon picking up the phone that connected her to her visitor.

"Am I that obvious?" Kara asked. She didn't get an answer. "Half-breeds aren't designed to upload, right?"

"What?"

Kara sighed. "Erin and Lachel weren't supposed to be designed to be sent to new bodies if they were killed. Correct?" Sharon nodded.

"From what I know, they would have been a very unexpected success in the tests being done on Caprica. They wouldn't have copies."

"But is it possible that they really were uploaded?"

"I don't know…Maybe. If they were…if they were, that means…it means their destiny is far more significant than I thought."

Kara raised an eyebrow. "How?"

"They were failed experiments in procreation and rapid maturation. There wouldn't have been any reason to keep them around, unless there was something more…Kara, what's going on? Why are you asking this?" Without answering, Kara hung up the phone and left.

* * *

Later that night, Lee found her playing solitary Triad in her bunk. "So I heard a little rumor today that you paid a visit to our little toaster-in-a-box." Kara didn't answer. Lee leaned against the wall by her rack. "What's the matter, Kara? Talk to me." 

"I'm playing cards."

"And I'm trying to have a conversation. Were you just reminiscing about Caprica, or is something up?"

Kara looked up at that. "Don't talk to me about Caprica."

"I saw it too, Kara. I know it's not the same, but I saw it, too…Is that what this is about? You went to talk about…them." She abandoned her card game.

"You can't even utter their frakking names, Lee, so why exactly am I supposed to be having a conversation with you about this?"

"Lachel and Erin," he slowly and deliberately said. "Are they what this is about?" Her silent stare was his answer. "Okay. They're gone, Kara, and there's nothing anyone could have done."

"What if they're not?"

Lee froze. "What?"

"What if they're not really gone? What if they were uploaded?"

"I thought that – "

"I know what we thought, but what if we were wrong? I…I've been having a lot of really frakked up dreams recently, and...I'm worried that at this moment they're on a Basestar somewhere."

"Kara, they're Cylons. Basestars are their homes. And you're getting this from dreams?" She rolled her eyes, turning back to her game.

"Forget it, Lee."

"Okay, fine, maybe you're right. But even if you are…promise me, Kara, that you're not going to do something crazy. We have no idea where they are, if they are actually still alive, and anything you try would almost certainly be a suicide mission. I'm not losing my best pilot that easily. You've survived too much already. So…do you promise?"

"Whatever, Lee."

"Promise me."

Kara sighed. "I promise."

"Thank you…And for what it's worth…I hope your dreams are wrong."

* * *

The last place that Kara ever wanted to see again was Caprica. The carnage that the old high school / resistance base had held was something she wished she could permanently erase from her memory. However, it seemed like that wish would not be granted.

After finally falling asleep following a few hours of tossing and turning, Kara found herself back on her homeworld, outside of the ravaged building. She'd arrived just in time to see the C-Bucks and other resisters get slaughtered by the centurions that were running around the base like metallic grim reapers. Amidst the cries of panic and pain from her friends, she could hear a screaming wail that could only belong to a small child. It was hard to feel sympathy toward Erin and Lachel at that moment for the terror they must have feigned while their race mowed down more members of her own. But then Kara actually saw the girls.

For the first time since the dreams had began, Lachel was appearing as a baby, unable to do anything for herself but cry while the centurions circled her in the open courtyard. Even more disturbing, however, was the fact that Erin was solemnly commanding the toasters that were advancing on her sister. Their long-fingered hands were replaced with guns, and a cloud of dust erupted from the spot that all six Cylons began shooting at, obscuring Kara's view. She didn't need to see to know, though – the screams had abruptly ended.

Startling awake, Kara's breath caught when she realized that she wasn't alone in her bunk. Lachel – aged once more – was sitting at the foot of her bed, silently staring at her, her eyes haunting.

Upon truly waking up a moment later, Kara's heart was racing like she'd just finished running laps around Galactica at a sprint. She was alone in her bunk, and everything in the room was just the way that it had been when she went to sleep a few hours earlier. She was exhausted, but didn't dare risk trying to sleep again. Slipping out of bed, she got her PT clothes and sneakers with plans of heading to the training room – something needed a pummeling. One thing was for certain, though: she now knew that Lachel really had to be alive.

* * *

Lachel opened her eyes to see that Leoben and Erin were watching her. "She knows," she told them, and saw Leoben's smile grow.

"Excellent."

"Why are we doing this?" Lachel asked him. "If your intention is for her to come for me, she will die trying. What is the point?"

"We know now that love is the answer," Leoben replied. "It was always known that a human would never love a Cylon child – that is why model Twelve was chosen to carry out God's will."

"We survived," Erin pointed out. He smiled.

"Yes. Why? Because of your mother? Because of whom she is, what she gave you in your genes? There is so much that love cannot do, cannot stop, cannot change…and yet it has a power that we must understand in order to get what we need from it. So we sent you to her. However, one thing was unexpected – you see the power balance between you as opposite of what it really is."

Erin frowned. "How?"

"Your hope, your expectations of your mother – they were weaknesses. Anger and disappointment can be as well. What did your efforts bring you? Nothing. Kara is not Cylon; she does not understand the things that you do, or see them in the same way. But Lachel…you are different."

"She's a traitor," Erin interjected.

"She earned something closer to love than anyone had imagined her getting. And that is why we do this. Even without your physical presence, you have so much power over your mother. Why? What are its limits? How can we manipulate it? Understanding love is the key to obeying God's will, and therefore to being alive."

"What purpose would her death serve?" Lachel asked.

"We haven't killed her yet, have we? But if she dies, it will give us more information. We do not fear death, but humans do. Something that can make them override their own desire for self-preservation in order to save another is extremely powerful."

Erin rolled her eyes. "It also sounds extremely stupid. And dangerous."

Leoben laughed. "Perhaps. Perhaps not." Lachel decided to stop asking questions. She wasn't sure if she wanted the answers anymore.

* * *

By the time Kara got out on patrol, she was really hoping that the Cylons didn't pick her shift as the one to find Galactica during; she wasn't sure if she'd make it through a dogfight alive. She really should have been taking stims, but then Doc Cottle – and Lee – would know that she wasn't sleeping, and want to know why, and that wasn't something she was willing to discuss. Besides that, they'd had enough problems already with overtired and drugged up pilots. So she was just praying to the Gods that the time would pass by quickly.

"I want to do tricks," a little voice said. Looking down, Kara realized that not only was she no longer in her flight suit, but there was a small blonde girl sitting on her lap. A smile crossed her face.

"Tricks, huh? I dunno. This is your first flight."

"Please?" Lachel asked her.

"Mmm. I've got a question for you first. What are the different ways a Viper can move?"

"Forwards and backwards…side to side…up and down…pitch, and…and…I forget."

"Starts with a Y."

"Yaw."

"Right. And what's everyone's personal favorite?"

"Roll!" On cue, Kara tightened her grip around Lachel's waist with one arm and used her other hand to throw the Viper into a single barrel roll. The girl was giggling as they pulled out of it. "One more?"

"Later."

"Okay." She twisted around slightly to look up at Kara. "You have to forget."

"Forget what?"

"Forget me. You have to, to keep us both safe. It's the only way."

And then reality came rushing back all of a sudden. "Where are you, Lachel? Are you okay? I mean, all the things I've seen…"

"I'm sorry about that."

Kara shook her head. "It doesn't matter, as long as you're all right." She was silent for a long moment.

"I can't wait to see my cousin," the little girl finally said.

* * *

"Kara? Kara, can you hear me?"

A moment later, Lachel was gone; Kara was still out on CAP, and about five seconds away from crashing into Galactica's starboard engine housing. Instantly, she yanked the nose of her Viper up and cleared the ship.

"I'm here," she replied over wireless. "I'm okay."

Standing with the LSO overlooking the flight deck, Lee sighed with relief. "What the frak happened, did you black out?"

"No, I'm fine."

"Like hell. We've been calling you for the past five minutes. Can you handle landing?"

Kara rolled her eyes. "I'm all right, Lee."

"Get your six on the flight deck, Lieutenant. Now."

It was her turn to sigh this time. "Yes, Sir."

* * *

Lee was amazed that Kara somehow managed to get on the deck, get down from her Viper, and get out of the hangar before he could get to her. Granted, he got a little sidetracked with getting another pilot in the air to replace her, but Kara had still put in a good bit of effort in getting away from him and everyone else as fast as humanly possible. She wasn't in their bunk room so his next guess was that she was beating something up – hopefully an inanimate 'something.'

"What's going on?" Lee asked as he joined her in the otherwise empty training room. Kara got a few more hits in on the punching bag.

"Nothing."

"Yeah, Kara, it definitely looks like nothing. You almost died out there, do you get that? Galactica wasn't the only ship you almost slammed into. And you weren't answering anyone on wireless for several minutes." She didn't reply. "What the frak was going on? I want an explanation; you owe me that."

Kara stopped assaulting the bag long enough to shoot him a glare. "I don't owe you shit, Lee."

"You're the best friend I've got left in this universe…maybe more than that, but that's beside the point. I want to know what's happening with you before it gets you killed. Were you conscious?"

"I…I don't know. I couldn't hear you; I would have said something if I had."

"Okay…what was going on?"

Kara left the bag alone, turning away from him. "Lachel was with me in my cockpit."

Lee raised an eyebrow. "Are you serious?"

"I wasn't hallucinating, and I'm not crazy. She was there, with me." He didn't answer, and Kara didn't like the look on his face once she finally forced herself to check his reaction. "I'm not frakking making this up, Lee! I've been seeing her…she's been coming to me in dreams. I don't know why. And I really don't know how it's possible, but my daughter was out there flying with me today."

He sighed. "Wow."

Kara rolled her eyes. "You're the one who asked. Now leave me alone."

"I believe you, Kara," he told her. "You know why?"

"I'm sure that you're going to enlighten me."

"You just called her your daughter. Out loud. Have you ever done that before?"

"No."

Lee nodded. "Something really has to be going on."

She considered that for a long moment. "I'm afraid they're doing something to her."

"Is it possible that they're just messing with your head?"

"I don't know…maybe, but this time…this conversation was…different…" she trailed off as scene in the Viper replayed in her head.

"What?" Lee asked.

"Sharon."

He frowned. "What about her?"

"Lachel said she's going to see her cousin. The Cylons are going to get Sharon's baby back."

* * *

TBC... 


	3. Chapter 3

When the door opened to Detainment Alpha – the official name for what everyone on the ship knew as the 'Cylon cage' – Sharon automatically stood, stepping towards the phone that connected her to visitors. As she moved, however, she realized that Helo wasn't the one who had come to see her, and it wasn't Doc Cottle come to check on the baby, either. Lee Adama stared icily from just inside the door while Kara stepped over towards the cage and picked up the phone.

"You said on Caprica that you don't have access to everything the Cylons know, correct?" she asked.

"Yes."

"How do you access what you do know?"

She thought about that for a moment. "I…I'm not sure. The link is just in my head."

"But you said in debriefing that you severed your link in Caprica City so that they couldn't track you once you and Helo escaped."

"I did. But sometimes the link can be manipulated…like to rewrite a virus."

Kara nodded curtly. "We need information." Sharon glanced over to Lee, who still hadn't moved.

"The Commander is okaying this?" she asked.

"Leave that to me," he replied.

* * *

"I'm not going to turn on a tracking beacon right in the middle of the fleet!" Adama told his son later that evening as they discussed matters in the commander's office.

"Our whole existence is a game to them! She's only alive to give us information. If we're not taking advantage of that, then we might as well stuff her out an airlock."

"She's alive because if she dies, she goes home."

"You think they know she's alive? She's with the fleet?"

Adama gave him a small smile. "I'm sure it was on the short list of explanations as to how we fish-in-a-barreled their attack fleet."

"Kara thinks it's more than that…" His father looked up.

"What do you mean?"

"She thinks they know everything…about the baby…that it's alive. She thinks they'll come for it."

"Probably will…Now, is this all coming from intuition, information I should have, or something else I need to hear about?"

"The latter."

Adama nodded. "And why am I only hearing about it now?"

"Honestly…because I wasn't sure what to say…or if it was my place to say it."

He raised an eyebrow. "I wasn't a fan of this game the last time we played it," he told his son.

Lee shook his head. "It's not like that, Dad. No one's done anything wrong. I just…I'm hoping for Kara's sake that this little Cylon game ends soon."

* * *

Sharon wasn't sure exactly what Lee had said to his father – and knew she didn't have the right to ask – but in the end, Adama agreed to letting her try to manipulate her link. At best, she'd be able to tell them something vital they didn't already know. At worst…no one wanted to think about that. Everyone knew that it was most likely she'd simply discover whatever the Cylons wanted her to discover, and they hoped that that would be new information.

She would need a ship nearby to connect with, and no one was risking taking her off Galactica, so that meant waiting until the Cylons found them. Her baby was growing faster than a human child would, and the connection she had with her daughter only strengthened her abilities. She sensed the Cylon presence nearby even before the warning for "Action Stations, Action Stations" came across the overhead.

The stream of information that all Cylons shared in was just on the other side of a firmly locked 'door' in her mind. Unlocking it allowed her to explore what was on the other side, but also allowed others in. Several streams of knowledge were still off-limits, but she tried to locate and 'download' everything she possibly could. She didn't feel the presence of someone else exploring her own mind until it was almost too late – she quickly shut and locked the 'door' again.

She came out of the near trance she'd been in just in time for Galactica to execute a jump. Looking around her cell, she realized that Helo was standing by the phones.

"Anything?" he asked when she picked up the receiver on her end.

"There are more Cylons in the fleet."

"Sleepers?"

"Not all of them."

"What models?"

"I-I'm not sure, I just felt…others. This fleet only exists because they've chosen to let it exist. They know where you are, they already knew I was here, and when the time comes, they'll get what they want."

* * *

That night, Helo, Lee, Kara, and Tigh had a meeting with Adama. The thought that they were the rodent in a Cylon game of cat and mouse was not comforting to anyone. As far as being an experiment, keeping Sharon and the baby with the fleet was just as important as getting them back was to the Cylons. Adama could agree that, depending on the girls' motives, Lachel and Erin potentially had the same value. None of the children fully belonged to one side or the other.

"Think the toasters would go for half and half?" Lee asked. "We get two, they get the other two."

"And who exactly is picking which side gets which?" Helo asked him with a glare. The CAG held his look, but didn't reply.

"What if we both got all of them?" Kara asked. Everyone stared.

"What?"

"They've already proven that Lachel and Erin can be uploaded, and I assume they could do the same thing for Sharon's baby if they wanted to…what if half-breeds can also be copied?"

"Copies aren't identical," Helo pointed out.

"We'd be giving them exactly what they wanted!" Tigh exclaimed. "Right now the only insurance we've got that they're not gonna blow this ship to hell is that they know their science project is onboard."

"Their science project is our secret weapon," Kara shot back.

"I was waiting for the rest of this plan," Adama told her with a smile. "Let's hear it."

"Sharon knows a thing or two about Cylon viruses," Helo explained. "If they agree to the deal, we hand them a Trojan horse." The commander considered it.

"You'd use your daughter for that?" he asked. Helo nodded.

"I'd never let them have her, not even a copy. She's one of us, not one of them."

* * *

They needed Sharon to tap into the Cylon information network one more time, but this time she was giving information instead of taking it. In order to keep the Cylons from figuring out the real plan, she wiped knowledge of it from her memory before connecting during an attack a week later. She then left an information string that the Colonists wanted to talk – about the future of both of their species.

"You think they're going to take the bait?" Kara asked Lee as they had lunch one afternoon.

"I think they want what we have a hell of a lot more than they want what they have."

"What if this is all for nothing?"

"What do you mean?"

"They could use our exact same plan back on us. The first Sharon didn't know what she was doing until she'd already pulled the frakking trigger. Lightning's not the only thing that doesn't strike the same spot twice – luck is just as bad."

"Kara, you've told me this yourself: if they wanted us dead, we'd be dead by now."

"Yeah, but we're not. And the 'why' of that is what bothers me."

Lee looked up as he noticed who was entering the mess – Tigh with a flask in hand. He had an interesting look on his face as he watched the two pilots. "I should get down to the deck," Lee said. Kara followed his line of vision and sighed.

"Right," she muttered as she gave Tigh a sarcastic little wave. "What do you think the sentence in hack is for having lunch together?"

"Stop it, Kara. We both knew without him having to tell us that this can't be."

"We're eating at the same table, Lee. Where's the crime in that?"

"It comes later if we don't stop ourselves right here. You and I both know how dangerous things can get around here when you toss the regs out the airlock because you care too much."

"I learned the hard way not to ever do that again," Kara quietly told him. Lee nodded.

"And I don't want my lesson to be learned with your life on the line. Eventually...we'll find a balance. But right now..." He held her gaze for a moment, then got up and left the mess.

* * *

A few days later, Doc Cottle was in the middle of making a house-call to Detainment Alpha when the alert sounded for action stations. "Well, there goes my good day," he muttered.

Sharon smiled slightly – and then her eyes rolled up and her body went completely rigid. Cottle just stared. "What the frak?" one of the guards muttered, stepping forward. The doctor waved him away.

She came out of it a moment later, looking around in confusion as she became reoriented. "I need to speak to Commander Adama," she finally said once she was able to speak again.

* * *

The Commander was having an interesting morning up in CIC. They'd had two Raiders show up on dradis, but instead of engaging the Vipers out on CAP, they played escape and evade with them for five minutes before jumping back away.

"Any ideas?" Adama asked Tigh as they both looked at the information up on center console. The XO just shook his head.

"Sir, Major Cottle needs to speak with you," Dualla reported from her station. "He's in Detainment Alpha." The ship's two lead officers exchanged a look.

Sharon was pacing anxiously when Adama arrived while Cottle watched her from outside the cell. "Somebody, tell me what's going on," Adama demanded. Cottle just pointed to the phone.

"They reactivated my link externally," Sharon explained once he'd picked up the receiver.

"I'm not sure I like the sound of that."

"It doesn't excite me, either, Sir. They want to hear our offer. They're willing to meet face to face."

* * *

A good amount of information had gotten dumped in Sharon's head when the Cylons connected. She was able to draw out the jump coordinates for the point where the Cylons wanted to meet: a barely touched system that just happened to have an old outpost on the moon of the fourth planet. There would be no Basestars, no Galactica, just a supposedly stripped down heavy Raider and a Raptor. Kara and Helo, and a third pilot, Shadow, got whatever weapons they could onto the Raptor, although they knew that the ship would be no match for the Cylons if they ran into trouble.

"Standby to jump on my mark," Kara told Helo as they flew away from Galactica. Shadow was up with her in the co-pilot's seat. "Mark."

As soon as they came through the jump and got their bearings, they began thoroughly scanning everything in sensor range. They only picked up one ship, a Cylon heavy Raider.

"I'll bet you twenty cubits we don't make it off that rock alive," Helo offered up. Kara smiled.

"I'm tempted to take that bet – when we're dead I won't have to pay you. Make sure you've got the jump coordinates back to Galactica programmed," she told Shadow, who was being left in the Raptor while she and Helo went into the base. "I'd be willing to risk jumping from on the surface if we absolutely had to." He nodded. Once they'd touched down, Kara and Helo drew their side arms and left the Raptor. Shadow shut the hatch behind them.

The base had obviously been abandoned for years. "Some meeting point," Kara muttered as they did a little bit of exploring. Helo shrugged.

"We already know they beat us here. So where's the party?" Almost in the same second that the words left his mouth, the lights in the room they were in turned on. Kara and Helo spun, guns raised, automatically putting their backs together to they could cover each other. They each wound up facing a Cylon, Doral and Six..

"You won't need those," Six told Kara, indicating her gun.

"Forgive me if I don't take your word for it," she shot back. The other woman smiled.

"Suit yourself."

Even though Helo's gun was still trained on him, Doral moved away, over towards the table that was in the middle of the room. "You had a proposition?" he asked the two pilots.

"You know that Sharon is with us," Helo started. "Our child will be born in the fleet."

"We know that Lachel and Erin are still alive," Kara added.

Six grinned, moving to sit down as well. "We were thinking of calling them model 13."

She wasn't expecting Kara to smile back. "I was hoping you'd say that," she told the Cylon.

"Oh, really?"

She nodded. "If they really are a new model, then you can make copies of them, can't you? And you could make copies of Sharon's baby." Six raised an eyebrow.

"If we wanted."

"We have what you want, you have what we want – but we both want both of them. And I'm assuming toasters don't get taught to share in school." Six let the crack slide, caught up in rapt fascination with their proposal.

"This solution is workable for you?"

"Would we be here if it wasn't?" Helo shot back.

"There are still many weeks left before your child is born," Doral pointed out. "Intervention to change that fact would more than likely result in her mother's death."

Six grinned. "I wouldn't have a problem."

"We would," Kara spoke up before Helo could get himself in trouble. "We each keep our respective prizes for now, and they'll both stay unharmed," she put a bit of emphasis on that last part, and didn't like the resulting smile on Six's face. "Decisions will be made once the baby is born."

"Agreed," Six told them. Doral nodded.

"We'll forgo tracking your fleet until this is resolved, as long as none of you return to the Colonies." Kara and Helo looked at each other. They'd already known that there was a plan in place for their former worlds – a plan they were probably powerless to stop – but it was still a hard concession to make.

"Agreed," they finally said in unison.

* * *

Shadow was pretty on edge by the time Helo and Kara returned to the Raptor; he had a gun trained on them as they opened the hatch. "What's going on?"

"Put that frakking thing away," Kara shot as she made her way towards the pilot's seat. Helo started running through the checklist for lift-off.

"What did they say?" Shadow inquired again.

"Nothing," Helo told him. "At least, nothing yet."

"I want my twenty cubits," Kara said.

He rolled his eyes. "We're not off the ground yet."

But soon they would be, and minutes after that, they were back amid the ragtag fleet. They'd returned without anything tangible in their hands, just a hope for what would be to come.

* * *

TBC... 


	4. Chapter 4

Two months later, the Cylons appeared to be staying true to their word. There hadn't been a single attack on the fleet, and everyone was actually beginning to remember what life had been like on Galactica before the holocaust had occurred.

Kara looked up from the breakfast she was trying to eat when two objects were placed beside her on the table. "What's this?" she asked Lee as he sat down in the chair next to her.

"Shuttle tickets over to Cloud Nine for tomorrow afternoon."

She raised an eyebrow. "Oh, really?"

"Yeah. I figured a little fresh air and sunshine would be good – even if it is all fake."

"Can we go, please?" a voice asked, and Kara turned to see that Lachel sitting in the chair on her left.

"That's your breakfast?" Lee asked the little girl, noticing the cookie on her plate. She grinned before taking a bite of it.

"Mmm-hmm. Can we please go to the ship, Kara?"

"I got your shift covered," Lee told her. "Come on, what do you say?"

It was absolutely perfect the way the three of them fit together. Too perfect, almost. The little family Kara never thought she would have. Never thought she would want.

"Kara?" Lee asked, but his mouth wasn't moving. "Hey, Kara," she heard his whispered voice say again, but the sound was coming from somewhere else. "Kara?"

* * *

The mess hall faded away, and as she opened her eyes, she saw the ceiling of her bunk. Lee was next to her bed, shaking her shoulder to wake her up. "I'm awake," she muttered, closing her eyes again.

"You going running this morning?"

Kara shook her head, eyes still shut. "I'll hit the training room after my shift."

"Oh, that's right; you're on early today, aren't you?"

She cracked one eye open and glared. "You made the schedule."

"I know, I'm on early, too, in CIC…So I guess we should get showers and get ready to go." Kara smiled.

"Be there in a minute."

* * *

Over the past few months, they'd quickly found that ignoring their connection wasn't going to work. They'd both turned into pains in everyone's asses and eventually their fellow pilots had decided that covering for them when it came to Tigh was easier than having to deal with them otherwise. Kara and Lee weren't quite sure how to define whatever it was they had between them, other than a deep friendship with certain…fringe benefits, but they were working things out.

"I had another dream last night," Kara brought up as they shared a cold shower in the bathroom, washing away the traces of what they'd done before the water had started. It was one of the few ways they could get time alone without worrying about prying eyes.

"I thought they were tapering off?" Lee questioned.

"They were…Before."

"What happened?"

"Lachel was here, on Galactica. Living here."

"Has that ever happened before?"

Kara shook her head. "The closest was the time in my cockpit. Usually I'm seeing her wherever she is. This time, she was seeing a part of my life. "

"You think it was just a normal dream? I mean, it's been weeks since the last one, hasn't it?"

"Yeah…I don't know."

Lee brushed a few soap bubbles off her shoulder and cut off the water. "Do me a favor: don't spend too much time thinking about it while you're on patrol. We can talk later tonight; just keep your head in the game while you're in your cockpit." Kara grinned, giving him a two-fingered salute after she wrapped a towel around herself.

"Yes, Sir, Captain Adama, Sir."

"Hey, I'm just saying – "

"Yeah, yeah, you're just looking out for your interests."

"Oh, really?"

"Yeah, it would be a shame if you had to find a new shower buddy."

Lee laughed. "Mmm-hmm, I've gotten kinda attached to my current one."

They headed back to their bunkroom to get changed into their clothes and start their days. "Oh, Lee," Kara said as he was about to leave and tossed an object in his direction. He just barely caught it – a stogie. Kara grinned. "I told you I'd get more eventually."

* * *

Kara was on her way to the hangar bay when she ran into Helo in the corridor. "Hey, do you have early shift?" she asked him. He shook his head, grinning from ear to ear.

"I've been up all night. Five pounds, four ounces."

That took a minute to sink in. "Wait, what? Your baby?"

Helo nodded. "Born at 0436 this morning. She's beautiful, Kara."

She smiled. "Congratulations."

"Thank you."

"What are you doing roaming the ship?"

"It's going to be a quick roam. Sharon wanted breakfast, so I figured I'd go get her something that wasn't just whatever some little PO scraped out of the bottom of a pot. She definitely earned it."

"I'll stop by later," Kara promised. "After my shift."

"Really?"

"Yeah, really. I want to see if the poor thing inherited your nose." Helo laughed.

"Brat!" he called after her as she continued towards the hangar.

* * *

By the time Kara got back down from her shift, half the ship knew about its newest resident. A Raptor recon mission was being planned to go to the armistice point – not to land, just to see if there was any activity there. Kara tried to stop herself from thinking about what could result from the recon trip. After a quick visit to Sharon (it was very strange to see a baby behind bars) she headed back down to the hangar. Maintenance would keep her busy for a while, hopefully physically and mentally.

Raptor 149 had just been launched when she arrived. The ship cleared the fleet, then jumped away. It reappeared in space within sight of the meeting moon. "Beginning dradis scans," Shadow told Racetrack. "No sign of Cylon ships."

"Anyone at the station?"

"I don't know…I think…I'm picking up a transmission."

"What kind of transmission?"

"It's coming from the base. I'm patching it through." A moment later, a voice came across the headsets that were inside their flight suits:

"Can anyone hear me?" a child's voice asked. "They left me here all by myself. Is anybody there?"

Shadow scoffed. "Yeah, right," he muttered.

"Is Dradis still negative?" Racetrack asked. He nodded. "Then we're landing on the surface." He gawked for a few moments, then obeyed.

* * *

Adama was in the CIC when the Raptor reappeared on Dradis scans. Racetrack quickly gave the story of what had happened. "We found her there all alone," she reported. "No sign of any other Cylons anywhere within scanning range." Adama considered that.

"They're just leaving their science project to us?" Tigh muttered. "No frakking way."

"And now all bets are off," Adama realized. "Dee, have the LSO give them clearance to land. Set condition one throughout the fleet and prepare to jump as soon as able." She nodded, carrying out the order without hesitation.

"What are you thinking?" Tigh asked the commander. Adama didn't reply, watching everything that was going on around them in the busy room. Dualla was keeping a running tab of the ships as they jumped away for anyone who was listening. About two thirds of the way through the list, Gaeta piped up:

"Dradis contact…Cylon Basestar!"

"Son of a bitch," the XO muttered.

Adama nodded to himself; unfortunately his suspicions had been correct. "We got the girl. The armistice was temporary, and now its time has run out."

"They're launching Raiders," Gaeta continued. "Time to intercept…two minutes."

"The last ship will be away in ninety seconds," Dualla added in.

"Tell the alert fighters to stand by," Adama ordered. "If any of the ships are delayed, launch them."

But everyone's FTL drives worked perfectly. Once the last ship was away, Galactica executed its own jump, just seconds before the Raiders would have been within weapons range.

* * *

Kara was underneath the Blackbird, doing some maintenance, when the alert for a jump came across the overhead system. "Hey, what about the Raptor at the meeting point?" she asked Tyrol as she pulled the top of her flight suit back on in response for the order for pilots to stand by.

"We just recovered it," he replied.

The fighters weren't deployed, though, and once Galactica cleared the jump, several of the deckhands starting scurrying around, preparing for the Raptor coming down from the flight deck. From her spot back under the stealth ship, Kara could see the lower half of Raptor 149 as it got towed to a parking space, and the hatch opened. A pair of legs that obviously belonged to a man jumped down first, then a female – and then following close behind was a child.

Kara got up. Fast.

* * *

TBC... (As always, I live for feedback) 


	5. Chapter 5

Lachel was scanning the room for Kara, knowing that she was there, and a small smile crossed the girl's face once their eyes finally locked. Suddenly a group of marines appeared and pulled her away from Racetrack.

"Wait!" Kara told them as she made her way over.

"We have orders, Sir," one of them told her.

"From who?"

"The XO."

Kara rolled her eyes. "Figures. Just wait a frakking minute, okay?" The marine that was trying to handcuff Lachel had gotten up close and personal once already in his life with Kara's right hook. He backed off.

Kara knelt in front of her. "Are you okay?" she asked. Lachel nodded. "What happened?"

"I don't know. She did something to me, and then I woke up all by myself."

"She who?"

Lachel looked away. "Erin…I don't want to go back."

"We'll do everything we can to make sure you don't. I need you to go with these guys for right now, and I'll come and see you as soon as I can, okay?"

"Promise?"

"Yeah. I've gotta go talk to some people first." Lachel nodded and Kara stood, giving a nod to the marines. They collected their charge and left the hangar. Kara left as well, heading for Adama's office.

* * *

Halfway between the hanger and the command area, Kara heard her name on the overhead and a request that she report to where she was already going. Adama's hatch was open, and she knocked on the frame as she went inside. He looked up from the paperwork on his desk.

"From the look on your face, I take it you know," he said.

"I was in the hangar." He nodded. "Why is she getting thrown in a cell? She's not a threat."

"We don't know that. A Basestar came following right behind her. We don't know what their purpose was in letting us have her."

"She doesn't want to go back. She doesn't want to help them."

"Is that what she told you?"

"She didn't even know what they were doing. She just woke up on that moon."

"What if she's a sleeper?"

Kara narrowed her eyes. "We all know what she is."

"She might not even know what she's here doing until a trigger's already been pulled."

"I know... but she's not that Sharon, Sir. She's not like the Sharon we have now, or any other model for that matter. She's something completely different."

"We still don't know what that means."

"I know…She is a Cylon, but she's like us, too. That was the whole point." Adama didn't reply. "You convinced me before to take a risk when it came to her. I'm glad that I listened. Now I'm asking you to do the same."

* * *

Kara stopped by her bunkroom to get the little stuffed animal she'd earlier given Lachel. Just before she headed out again, she heard a page on the overhead for Karl Agathon to report to Detainment Alpha. She ran into Helo in the hall on her way towards there. "Hey, do you have any idea what this is about?" he asked.

"No, I'm on my way to see Lachel." Helo smiled when he noticed the little dog in his friend's hands.

"Cute."

"Thanks."

"Doc was saying that he was trying to get permission to actually take the baby to the medical bay to check her out. I wonder if someone finally agreed."

"You still don't have a name for her, huh?"

Helo grinned sheepishly. "We're working on it."

The guard outside of the door opened it for them, and they both stopped short upon entering the room to see that Sharon, the baby, and Lachel were outside of the cage, standing in the middle of the room with Adama. "What's going on?" Helo asked, instantly going to Sharon's side and taking advantage of the fact that he was able to actually touch her for the first time in months.

Adama turned to Sharon. "A few months ago, you told me that you wanted me to know you made your own decisions about the actions you take. I thought it was about time that I make a few decisions of my own," he explained. "You were both supposed to be tools for the Cylons to learn from. We've all been given an opportunity to learn how to make coexistence work; I suggest making the most of it…Maybe we'll all be surprised in the end."

* * *

By the end of the day, Helo and Sharon had made plans to move into an empty room in the ship that they were going to convert into quarters for them and their still unnamed daughter. A crewman recruit would have more priviledges on the ship than Sharon would, but it was a start. For Kara, sorting out plans wasn't so easy. She'd promised herself that if Lachel was actually living in the fleet, she would make sure she went to school on one of the civilian ships, but now that she actually had the child with her, she was finding it difficult to think about sending her away. 

"What's the rush?" Helo asked her as they talked it over while she helped him pack up his stuff from their bunkroom. "I mean…I'm sure we don't even want to know some of the stuff she's already got up in her head."

"She didn't know what a dog was, Helo."

"And that's something she could learn better on some civilian ship? It's not like they've got any over there." Kara had to admit he had her there.

"But shouldn't she get to learn all the normal human stuff that people are supposed to know?"

"Normal human stuff? What the frak is normal in this fleet? And are we not human because we're military? Actually, don't answer that." They both laughed. "Why are you trying to get rid of her, Kara? You know you don't want to, I know you don't want to, so what is this really about?"

She sighed. "What the hell do I have to offer her? I'm not exactly parental material, Helo, and you know it."

"I'll exercise my rights under Article 23 for that one. But I do know one thing."

"What's that?"

"You didn't give up on her…Sometimes, that's all that really matters."

They both looked up as the door opened, and a little head poked inside. "Hey, Boxey," Kara told him.

"Can I come in?"

"Sure, my prince, what's up? Does Tyrol know where you are?"

Boxey nodded. "I heard there was another kid living here on Galactica now." Kara couldn't help but smile at the naked excitement in his eyes.

"Yeah, there is. How much else did you get out of the rumor mill?"

"She's your daughter…and she's kinda a Cylon, but different from the other ones."

Kara nodded. "Accurate so far."

Boxey handed her a book. "Sh-Sharon used to try to get together books for me to read. I thought that Lachel might like them, too."

"Thank you. How about you come find us tomorrow around lunchtime and we can go to the mess together, okay? You guys can get to know each other."

"Okay." Boxey hesitated a moment, giving Helo a sideways glance, before heading back out the hatch.

"I thought you and Lachel had a shuttle flight over to one of the liners tomorrow," Helo told Kara with a smile. She returned it.

"Guess not. What's the rush, right? She can learn enough around here for the time being."

He chuckled. "Right."

* * *

Trying to track Lachel down proved to be more of a challenge than Kara had anticipated. She'd left the girl with Cottle, getting checked over, but when she went back to the Life Station, she found that Lee had beaten her there. And the Doc hadn't asked where they were going.

After searching half the ship, Kara finally headed for the hangar bay on the off chance that they might be there. The pilot briefing room was empty, and there wasn't anyone around Lee's Viper – and then she noticed a head sticking out of her own fighter's cockpit.

"Lee?" she called as she headed over and started up the ladder. "What, did you break your own bird again?"

With a smile, he turned to her and put a finger over his lips, then turned back to what he was doing. Kara also grinned as she noticed the little person sitting in his lap. "Okay, what was I talking about?" he asked Lachel.

"How Vipers move in space."

"Right. Do you remember how many directions they move in?"

"Six?"

"Yep. Can you name them?"

"I think so," the girl replied. "Forwards and backwards, side to side, up and down…" Names eluded her at that point, so she simply made motions with her hand for the next two.

"That's pitch and yaw," Lee told her.

"Yeah. And roll," she finished. Kara smiled as she watched them together. She never would have thought that Lee would accept a Cylon like a human, but then again, Lachel wasn't an average Cylon. The days and weeks and years to come probably weren't going to be easy, but they'd be worth the challenge.

"Good job," she told the girl. "If you're finished with flight lessons for the day, I've got something that I wanted to show you."

"What?" Lachel asked as Kara and Lee both helped her climb out of the cockpit and down from the Viper.

"You like Galactica, right?" Kara asked the child, kneeling in front of her. "Living here would be better than going to another ship?"

She nodded. "Galactica is where you are."

"Well, then…I think I know of a bunk that's got your name on it."

Lachel's eyes lit up. "I can stay?"

"Yeah. You can stay." She grinned.

"Thank you."

"We're going to have to figure out something for you to do to keep busy when I'm flying, though."

"Well, what do you think, 'Mom'?" Lee teased Kara with a smile. "Is she too young to start training into a deckhand?"

"Don't start with me unless you want to wind up in the Life Station," Kara replied. "I don't think I'll get used to it any time soon, but even still, there's only one person with the rights to use that title." Lachel smiled. "And technically, she's about six months old, so yes, definitely too young for a deckhand. But maybe we'll work up to it. There's never a shortage of work to do on this ship."

Lee laughed. "No kidding."

"After we see my bunk, can we get dinner?" Lachel asked.

"I think that can be arranged," Kara told her, standing up and taking her hand. "Let's go."

"Lee, too?" she asked, reaching her free hand in his direction. He and Kara shared a smile.

"Yeah. Lee, too." He took Lachel's hand and they headed out of the hangar. Everything Kara never thought she wanted was exactly what she needed.


	6. Epilogue

Three females moved through the streets of Caprica City, ignoring the centurions that worked around them to remove traces of the attack that ravaged the planet. "I don't understand," Erin told Six and a Sharon model as they walked. "Why didn't we agree to the humans' offer? It would have given everyone what they wanted – or at least, what they thought they wanted."

Six smiled. "We lived up to the goal of that deal," she replied. "Everyone has what they want; they just don't know it yet."

Sharon handed the girl a sheet of paper with a picture. All it looked like to her was a magnified image of a group of cells. "What is this?" Erin asked.

Sharon smiled. "Your new cousin. And it's not a half-breed."

* * *

FIN. 

Hope you enjoyed. Feedback is welcome, as always.


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